Category: reflections

Oh my goodness. It’s finally done. We have a full backyard of grass (again?).
Here’s a brief run down.
We moved into our new home Sept. 26th with no grass and ruts worn into the dirt from rainwater washouts.
Our builder comes right after our final walk through and grades the dirt and fills in any missing holes.
As soon as we get the keys we throw down a mixture of bermuda and rye grass. Less than an hour later, it’s pouring down rain and most our our new seed is washed away.
A couple days later we rake, plow and grade the backyard again with hand tools and COVER the backyard with rye grass. We start to see some progress as the rye grass begins to poke up — but its not enough coverage to do the job.
Presley moves in a few days later.
With a muddy dirt yard, we’re forced to take her out in the front whenever she needs to take care of her business.
I begin to wonder, “didn’t we move into a house with a backyard so we wouldn’t have to do this anymore?”
Later that week I stopped by The Greenery in Waxahachie to see about sod prices.
I thought we might need three pallets of grass since I walked the backyard off and I measured it 20×40 feet (or 800 sq feet).
They had two pallets available at half price since they had been sitting there for close to a week. We had it delivered and felt proud of our bargain price.
We spent 4 or 5 hours that night, re-raking, plowing and grading the backyard and installing the two pallets of grass.
As we emptied off the second pallet, we realized that some how the two pallets of grass were not as much as we had thought.
Two days later we get a copy of our survey and realize our backyard is a lot closer to 25×65 feet in size (or 1625 sq feet) – double what we originally thought.
So we placed an order for three more pallets.
In the meantime we kept watering the new sod and the rye grass started taking off. By yesterday afternoon there was rye grass everywhere. Thick 3-6″ tall rye grass everywhere.
We had made plans to go the State Fair last night but just before Laurie got home we got the call that our sod was on it’s way.
So we dug and plowed and raked up the rye grass in half the yard and hopefully got rid of enough that our new sod will take root.
And as of 10:15 last night, Laurie laid the last piece of sod – and I stretched out on our new turf.
It’s been an adventure to say the least – and hopefully it’s something I won’t have to do for a long, long, long time – if ever.
And the moral of the story – if you’ve got the money honey – get someone else to do it. 🙂